


Heartless

by patentpending



Series: 13 Days of no-longer Halloween [6]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Doomed Relationship, Fantasy, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Necromancy, One of My Favorites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 22:16:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17775221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patentpending/pseuds/patentpending
Summary: The Dragon Witch formed Patton from the scraps of bodies dug from soft and moldering ground in the dead of night and bestowed him with one purpose: find Roman Sanders, make him fall in love, and rip his heart out.





	Heartless

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: body horror, mentions of dead bodies, death, self-loathing, gore, blood, heavy angst, unintentionally not eating, SPOILER: temporary character death

Patton was formed from the scraps of bodies dug from soft and moldering ground in the dead of night.  His skin was stitched together with the finest of spider silk, leaving tiny scars that shine like starlight against his patchwork body.  Inside of him, delicately spun veins lead to a heart taken from someone much larger than him.  It is almost painful as it beats inside his chest.  His creator labored for years to create him just as she needs him - perfect.  He is beautiful, and he is horrifying.  He is graceful, delicate, and he is an abomination.

Patton is the perfect man, and he will commit the perfect sin.

His chest flutters with his shallow breaths, growing deeper as the stolen blood begins to cycle through his veins.  His eyes, when they open, are the milky blue of death.  Slowly, he sits up and runs a hand through the hair that curls delicately around the shells of his ears, thoughts beginning to stir in the mind cobbled together from scraps of brain taken from cracked-open skulls.  Those death-blue eyes land on his creator.

She is almost as macabre as him - a being streaked in graveyard dirt and blood, wildness in her slitted eyes and wings folded tight against her broad back.  The Dragon Witch, they call her.  “Hello, child.”

He finds he can speak.  “Hello.”

“Here is your purpose: find my rival, Roman Sanders, make him fall in love with you” - she smiles through fanged teeth - “and rip out his heart.”

His too-large heart thuds in his chest as the instructions settle into his stolen blood.  “As you command.”

 

 

Patton is dressed in the most brilliant reds and blacks, startling against his patchwork skin.  The maids fuss and fawn over him, sighing at the color in his cheeks, the sweep of his eyelashes.  He is fairly certain his lashes are made from dried intestine and rot, but he keeps that to himself.

Besides, it’s nice to see the maids excited.  They are scarcely more than bones and dust, held together by thin strands of magic.  He smiles as they clatter about him.

“Guess I really rattle your bones, don’t I?”

They lace his feet up in boots and bustle him into the street.  He feels the sunlight on his skin for the first time, and he begins to walk.

He likes it outside.  People are startlingly kind, blushing men going out of their way to lead him around puddles, smiling women offering him carriage rides to wherever he needs, and other persons shyly asking if they can escort him wherever he’s going.

“No thank you,” he says, smiling.  “I’m just looking for someone.”

The sun is dark red and hanging heavy in the sky by the time Patton finds his mark.

The sorcerer is a dark-skinned man with eyes the color of sunlight and a tall frame cloaked in flowing red and white robes.  He opens his own door, smiling, but he expression freezes on his face when he sees Patton standing before him.

Patton smiles, revealing teeth bleached white by age and exposure.

Roman pauses for a long moment, staring at him.  “Hello,” he manages, swallowing hard.  “I’m Roman.”  His hazel eyes find the mark of the Dragon Witch, a delicate curving thing huddled at the base of his neck.  An ironic smile flickers on Roman’s lips.  “And I suppose you are to be my downfall.”

Patton knows why his heart beats faster at the sight of the other man, but he did not expect it to feel like this.  He licks his lips - woven from pink velvet and patches of flesh.  “I am.”

Roman’s eyes soften with resignation, and he steps back to make way for Patton.  “In that case, come on in.”

Patton’s instructions skitter through his brittle bones, but he hesitates, something in his ill-fitting heart holding him back.  “Why?”

Roman shrugs, hands clenching on the wooden door frame for a moment before he snaps them back and makes a show of smiling.  “I won’t send you back to your death.”

“Aren’t I already dead?”

The sorcerer snorts.  “Let’s keep that death merely technical.”

The man bustles the abomination inside and snaps at a nearby shadow.  A dark figure forms from it, bowing low before him.  “Show our guest to some quarters, and take care of him.”

It bows once more and takes Patton’s arm, shadow and rotten flesh cold against each other, as it leads him away.  He turns and glances over at his shoulder at Roman, who is already stalking away.  “Thank you!”  He calls.  Roman’s shoulders tense, but he does not turn around.

The shadow leads Patton to a small, circular room, adorned with only a bed, a desk, and a closet.  “Thank you,” Patton repeats as it dissolves with a bow.

He falls on the bed at the center of the room and finds he can sleep.

 

The next morning, he blinks awake and examines the climbing ivy crawling across his artistically crumbling stone walls.  Gently, he touches a single leaf and is almost surprised when it does not wilt under his touch.  “Guess you won’t be  **leaf** -ing me anytime soon.”

Outside, the sky shines a soft, pale blue.  There is a garden, choked with weeds and scrubs, beyond his window.  He sits on the window sill and slides onto the ground with a soft thump.  Upon closer inspection, the garden is in worse shape than he thought.  The few recognizable vegetables are buried beneath swarms of pests, and molding herbs rot in the corners.

Patton sighes, gently running a finger across a particularly dejected tomato.  “I’ve got a few different colors in my thumb, but I don’t think green is one of them,” he confides in it.  “You’ll have to excuse my ignorance; I was only born yesterday.”

He spends the day mostly wandering around through the sorcerer’s labyrinth of a home.  Apparently, Patton’s room is in the opposite wing of the house as Roman’s quarters, which he supposes is only to be expected.  As soon as he wanders near, the shadow men form, barring the way with crossed arms.

“Alright, alright.”  He holds up his hands in surrender, one monster smiling at the others.  “But I’m not sure what exactly I’m supposed to be doing here. You all have been rather  _shady.”_

They stand there silently until he backs away.

He roams through the labyrinth, the Minotaur at last.  His spider-silk stitches itch, and he ducks outside as quickly as he can, breathing a little easier in the fresh air.  He cannot remember being in a coffin a hundred times over, yet the sunlight against his skin is comforting in a way he cannot explain.

He sits beneath an ash tree until the sun falls below the horizon.

His days fall into a routine - sleep, fret over the garden, wander through the labyrinth, and sit outside, soaking up the sunlight.

He tries to call the shadow servants the same way Roman did, but they do not heed his cries.  Instead, he stalks towards the sorcerer’s chambers until they appear before him, arms crossed.  “Hello.”  He smiles brightly.  “You don’t happen to have any gardening equipment, do you?”

Patton’s instructions hiss inside of his bones, demanding action, demanding Roman.  His stomach clenches angrily, but he manages to ignore it.

The shadows supply him with everything he could ask for and bustle him away.

Patton hunts through the sorcerer’s sprawling library for help in the garden, running mismatched fingers over leather covers as soft and smooth as butter. He can tell which are Roman’s favorite by their wear, and he flips through the volumes of Shakespeare and Byron.  Still, he passes them by until he finds what he’s looking for.

One scrap of his brain must’ve been literate, for he is able to puzzle the words into formation.  They tell him what plants to leave and which to throw to the ground and which to burn for spells.  He forgets that last one deliberately, stolen bones aching.

The garden dart is warm with sunlight under his fingers, and he carefully picks out the weeds and pests.  His mind is silent in those moments, the perpetual roar of his instructions a discontented murmur.

It is a week before he sees the sorcerer again, and that’s only because Patton, in the middle of climbing the stairs to his room, faints.When consciousness comes to him again, he is laying on his back in the middle of a room he had never seen before, one rather irritated sorcerer hovering above him. 

“You haven’t been eating?!”  Roman demands, drawing a hand through his hair in frustration.  Vaguely, Patton thinks that it’s rather unfair irritation could look that good in anyone.  The sorcerer turns to a nearby shadow and hisses “I thought I told you to take care of him!”  The shadow shifts into a dark silhouette, which leans forward to murmur into Roman’s ear. 

“It’s my fault.”  Patton demurs, looking down at his shoes and tapping his toes together.  “I didn’t know that I need to eat.”

The shadow man dissolves into the light, and Roman sighs.  “You’ll be taking all your dinners with me, starting tonight.”

Patton looks up, startled.  “What?”

“I won’t have a guest dying of starvation under my roof,” the sorcerer declares, turning away with a dramatic swishing of his robes.  “And get changed!”  He calls over his shoulder.  “You’ve been wearing those clothes since you got here!”

 

Patton finds a blue shirt that shines like the midday sky and pulls it on under the softest gray cloak he could find.  He looks at himself in the mirror, fighting back the typical wave of nausea to truly examine himself as Roman might see him.

Patchwork skin that’s lovely like an abstract painting.  Stitches shining like starlight.  Soft, curling hair.  A pretty face.  Patton is not a monster to look at, but he knows he is, can feel the truth in every beat of his too-large heart.  He the scrap pile of a graveyard come to life.  He sighs, rubbing his fingers across the gray cloak.  A tiny smile lifts his lips.  He’d never dressed himself before.

It’s good.  He didn’t like the black that much.

 

 

The first few dinners are devoid of conversation.  The sorcerer obstinately brings a notebook with him, scribbling down magical runes that make Patton’s stolen skin crawl.  He mutters to himself, and Patton notices the shadows under his eyes.  The abomination’s instructions rampage through him, shattering his stolen bones, but he bites his tongue.  Roman cannot fall in love with him.  Never.

Yet still he sits uncomfortably in the quiet, fidgeting.  He wants to ask Roman what he’s working on, what he thinks of the garden, what he thinks he’s doing walking around with eyes like those, if he’s been getting enough sleep.  Instead, he lifts spoonfuls of rice to his mouth and chews slowly.

“Do you not care for the veal?”  Roman looks up, sunshine eyes narrowing.  “I can get you something else, if you want.”

“I’m fine,” Patton assures him.  “I just… don’t care for meat.”   _He_ was just dead slabs of meat not too long ago.  A small smile lifts his lips.  “It might be a big  _missed-steak,_ but I’d rather not.”

A small, startled laugh escapes Roman’s lips.  “Well, you’ve got to  _meat_  your match eventually.”

Patton grins, brown and blue eyes sparkling.  “It just makes me  _veal_ better!”

Roman laughs at that, a deep, rich sound that squeezes Patton’s too-large heart in its chest.  “Ah,  _well done.”_

Patton cracks up, giggles pure and unabashed as he clutches at his stomach.  It takes him a moment to realize Roman is no longer laughing along, just staring at him like he’s a revelation.

Patton’s smile dies, sitting up properly in his chair.  “Is something wrong?”

Roman snaps back to life.  “No! No, I just…” He hesitates, tapping his long fingers against the dark oaken table.  “It’s infuriating she knows me well enough to create you.”

Patton wilts, patchwork hands bunching together under the table.  “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”  Roman smiles, and it is almost real.

 

 

Patton works in the garden for hours each day, relishing the feeling of soil under his fingernails.  Once, he was buried under this ground a thousand times over, but now it is under him, solid and real and flourishing with life.  It’s odd, he supposes, that a dead thing could find so much joy in life, but he’s beginning to realize there are many things about himself he’s yet to discover.

“What are you doing out here?”  A familiar voice interrupts him in the middle of weeding.  Patton looks up and smiles as he meets Roman’s gaze.

“Gardening,” he says simply.  “Was I not supposed to be?”

“It’s fine, I just…”  Roman blinks.  “I didn’t expect it.”

Patton huffs a laugh.  “What, did you think I spent all my time lying around like a corpse? That’d be  _dead_  boring.”

“I didn’t think about it.”  Regret flickers over Roman’s face.  “I don’t think I even introduced myself to you properly.”

“You’re Roman,” Patton says, propping a drooping sunflower with a stake and snippet of twine.

“And?”  Roman settles into the grass next to him, watching his stolen fingers gently tie it into place.  “Who are you?”

_A monster, an abomination, an inhuman thing, your doom,_ Patton thinks but does not say.  He’s not sure if if he could bear to have Roman look at him the way he looks at himself.  “Patton.”

Roman repeats the name ponderously, letting the taste of it wash over his tongue.  “Thank you, Patton,” he says, standing and brushing the grass off of himself.  “The garden looks lovely.”

 

 

The dinners grow easier, conversation that starts with the garden sparking and growing into long, wandering things that jump indiscriminately from magic to the forests to puns to Shakespeare to Roman’s great adventures to the things Patton is learning everyday.  Their chairs shift from opposite ends of the table to right next to each other, arms brushing and knees knocking.

Roman begins to seek him out more often, chattering enthusiastically about his work inventing spells or anything else that crosses his mind.  He is always asking Patton’s opinions on things, and, more than once, Patton has to drag him away from experiments that just might get him killed.

Never mind Patton is the thing that’s going to get Roman killed.

Always, always, Patton’s instructions haunt him, gnawing at his bones, reminding him of his nature.  _Find my rival, Roman Sanders, make him fall in love with you, and rip out his heart._

It is only after perhaps the millionth time that these words echo through his blood that Patton realized something.  Roman is only to fall in love with Patton.  It says nothing about Patton falling in love with Roman.

He did that of his own accord.

 

 

“Goodness gracious.”  Patton puffs out his cheeks in frustration, lifting a fat, slimy snail off of one of his cabbages.  “I thought I told you you were in for a  _shell_  of a bad time if you came back here, kiddo.”

“Do you want me to get rid of it for you?”  Roman looks over the edge of his book before emitting a sharp, shrill sound; a shadow servant descends on the garden.  “They can eat anything.”

“It’s okay, kiddo,” Patton addresses the shadow servant.  “I’m just going to take this little guy to that nice pond over there. There’s so much to eat, he’ll probably have leisure  _slime_  to spare.”

The shadow dissolves, and Roman closes his book with a sigh.  “You’re making it so terribly hard not to fall in love with you. Under any other circumstances, we’d be happily wed and adopting an entire orphanage at this point.”

A startled laugh breaks free from Patton’s lips.  “The entire orphanage? Where will they all stay?”

Sparks fly from Roman’s wriggling fingers.  “Sorcerer, remember? I can figure something out.”

Patton’s lips twist in disapproval.  “We shouldn’t be teaching our non-existent children everything can be solved through magic.”

“But if the  _majority_  of our non-existent children’s problems  _can_  be solved through magic,” Roman hedges, “why not?”

“Sometimes, the things magic makes aren’t always good.”  Patton looks down at his patchwork hands and pulls on his gardening gloves.  “And nothing’s better than good ol’ fashioned hard work.”

The smile dancing on Roman’s lips is far too soft.  Patton’s commands roar in his blood, and he busies himself with gently placing the snail out of the way.

“You’d be a great non-existent dad.” Roman’s voice is far too honest.

“Wait, now  _I’m_  non-existent?”  Patton exclaims, desperately trying to steer them away from the softness in Roman’s eyes and the painful pulsing of Patton’s too-large heart.  “Have the children infected me? Tell me truly, doctor, how long have I to live?”

“You’re ridiculous!”  Roman throws his hands up in the air, laughing.  “I want a non-existent divorce.”

Patton giggles.  “I burned the non-existent marriage contract. Good luck returning me without the receipt, champ.”

Roman relaxes, a small, crooked grin on his face.  “Then I suppose we’re stuck together.”

“Yes,” Patton agrees, wondering if his stomach has started to rot.  It feels so warm all of the sudden.  “I suppose we are.”

“Patton, I-” Roman hesitates.  “Patton…”  Patton loves and fears the way Roman says his name - slow and deliberate, as if it’s an enchantment, a beautiful spell that must be said just right.

He wants to shake Roman, to scream and yell the sense back into him.   _I’m going to kill you!_ He wants to cry.   _Roman, love, I’m going to tear your heart from your chest._ Yet, instead, he smiles.   “Yes?”

Roman’s gaze slides off of his face and towards the garden.  “I think the snail is on your cabbages again.”

“That little shit.”

Roman laughs so hard he cries.

 

 

“Patton,” Roman asks one day, “do you know how to dance?”

Patton blinks up at him ponderously and puts down the tiny figure he is carving from a strip of ash.  They are in the library together in an afternoon where the sunlight streams in like warm honey though the windows, thick and sweet.  Patton’s feet are thrown up carelessly in Roman’s lap, and the sorcerer’s fingers run mindlessly over the patch of skin and stitches over Patton’s ankle.  Patton accepts the way the other man’s touch feels like the crackle of a fire, letting it wash over him before he responds.

“Not well,” he confesses, a sly grin on his lips.  “If I hadn’t checked the designs myself, I’d say I have two left feet.”

Roman laughs, free and unabashed.  “Well, that just won’t do!”  He wriggles out from under Patton’s legs and stands, brushing himself off.  “May I have this dance, my dear sir?”  He bows low, a teasing smile and hand extended towards Patton.

Patton grins up at him.  “Oh, handsome stranger, I don’t dance with just anyone. Besides, there is no music. I wouldn’t want this experience to  _b-flat.”_

“Just anyone?!”  Roman cries indignantly, throwing a hand against his forehead.  “I have been called less by many more, but one word of reproach from those lovely lips sends me reeling!”

Patton muffles his giggles behind patchwork hands, and Roman glances down at him, grinning.

“Very well then, I shall be forced to prove myself to you.”  Roman draws a line in the air, and his wand appears in hand.  He murmurs a few unintelligible words that make the air crackle with magic and smell of fire smoke; beneath his feet, the plush carpeting ripples and hardens, transforming into shining marble.

Awe rises in Patton’s throat, and he looks up with sparkling eyes.  “Wow.”

Color spreads across Roman’s cheeks, and it takes him a moment to clear his throat and try to hide his suddenly shy smile.  “And now, my dearest, Patton” - he snaps his fingers - “your music.”

It’s a lone piano, singing out a gentle waltz from some unseen place.  It is no song Patton has ever heard before, but it makes his chest feel lighter and his stolen limbs ache to move.

“Now then,” Roman snags his attention, holding out a hand.  “May I have this dance?”

Patton’s smile feels like it will break his face in half.  “You may.”

Roman’s hands are warm as they rest on Patton, one on his hip, one intertwined with his hand.  Roman is, unsurprisingly, a fantastic dancer, gently coaching Patton through the basic steps and laughing along with him whenever they trip.

“Descent,” Roman commends, smiling, as he guides Patton through a turn.

“Don’t be so harsh,” Patton laughs as Roman dips him.  “You’re not doing that bad.”

Roman squawks indignantly.  “I could just drop you.”

“Nooo,” Patton giggles.  “I’ll be good, I promise.”

“More than good,” Roman says, raising him back to his feet.  “You’re amazing, Patton.” They sway, foreheads pressed together.  “Do you know that?”

Fear, cold and hard, seizes Patton’s ill-fitting heart.  He forces a laugh.  “You flatterer.”

“No, I’m serious.”  Roman’s thumb rubs lightly over the stitching on Patton’s hand, sending shivers through him.  “You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”

“I’m not a person, silly!” Patton chirps, too-large heart splitting inside of his chest.  His fingers tighten their grip.

Roman startles.  “Of course you are.”

Patton stills.  “I’m really not.”

“Patton, darling” - Roman’s hand moves to cup the abomination’s face - “surely you know how human you are?”

“I’m not!”  Patton shoves him, and Roman stumbles back.  “I am made from scraps of dead things,” Patton spits, chest heaving. “She robbed graves and desecrated corpses to bring me to life. I’m not a thing you can love, Roman. I’m an abomination.”

Roman shakes his head and rushes forward, capturing Patton’s hands between his own.  “You’re not, Patton. You’re wonderful.”  He presses a soft kiss to Patton’s forehead.  “You’re perfect.”  His salt-stained cheek.  “You’re fantastic.”  His reddened nose.  “You’re good.”

The abomination laughs bitterly, shaking his head.  “You’re playing with fire, Roman.”

“Then burn me.”

“I couldn’t. You know I would never-”

“I know,” Roman says softly, “but I would let you. I would, Patton, because I lo-”

Patton kisses him, desperately, before Roman can say it.  Maybe if he doesn’t hear it, it won’t be true.

Roman tastes like sunlight.

 

 

Patton cannot sleep.  He is burning, stolen skin skittering over his ancient bones.  His mouth tingles with the taste of sunlight, and his core is so, so cold.  If Roman is the one playing with fire, why is Patton the one burning, melting away, hungering so deeply he shakes?

He doesn’t realize what he’s doing until his feet are on the ground.  He doesn’t stop.

He should.  He’s terrible and selfish and evil and awful.

He doesn’t stop.

He stalks through the labyrinth of their home, bare feet skimming over the stone floors.  He walks to Roman’s wing, and the shadow guards form, right on cue.

He is shaking, but his voice is not.  “Take me to him.”

They obey.

He knocks on Roman’s door, and the sorcerer opens, confusion melting away to something undecipherable as he sees Patton trembling before him.

“Patton?”  His sunshine gaze darts around the corridor.  “Is something wrong?”

“Me too,” Patton says.  “What you were going to… I do, too.”

Roman goes stock-still.  “Really?”

“Yes. Always, yes.”

They stand together, silent for a moment.  And then Roman is kissing him, hard and desperate, and Patton melts into him, pushing them both into the bedroom and slamming the door shut behind, and they burn.

Patton wakes up in Roman’s arms the next morning and the one after that and the one after that and on and on.

 

 

Roman is hiding something from him.  It’s nothing bad, Patton is sure, but he’s curious nonetheless.  His notebooks pile up around him, and their bedroom is choked with archaic texts.  Patton asks him, but Roman just smiles and kisses him.  “A surprise,” he says simply.

He finds out when Roman bounds into their bedroom before the sun even rises, eyes shining manically and smile wide.  “Patton” - the sorcerer shakes the abomination gently - “darling, wake up.”

“Is something wrong?”  Patton rubs at his eyelashes of dried intestine and rot.

Roman shakes his head, grabbing Patton’s hand.  “I’ve done it,” he says before dragging Patton behdin him to the sorcerer’s workshop.  “The Dragon Witch has control over you because of that mark” - he points to the curl at the base of Patton’s neck, and the abomination’s hand unconsciously flies to it - “but I’ve figured out how to remove it. She’ll never be able to harm us, Patton.”

Fear seizes Patton.  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Roman.”

“Yes, I do,” Roman insists, pulling a vial of something purple off of his shelf.  He pours a small amount onto his hand and approaches Patton.  “Trust me.”

To that, how else can Patton respond but nod?

The potion stings on his skin but in a good way, like the burn of sore muscles after a winning battle.  Roman hands Patton a mirror, and the abomination watches with wide eyes as the Dragon Witch’s mark fades into his patchwork skin.

His skin suddenly fits onto his bones.  Yet, his blood thrums with that roar.

“It worked,” Roman breathes out.  “It’s over. Patton, it’s over. I lo-”

“Don’t say it!”  Patton cries, backing up.  “Roman, please, don’t say it.”

Roman just smiles, that smile that can trick Patton into believing everything is going to be okay.  “She can’t control you anymore, Patton. It’s okay.”

“She’s inside of me!”  Patton clutches a hand to his chest, where the Dragon Witch’s instructions thrum in his blood, over and over and over again.   _Rip out his heart, rip out his heart._  “I am  _made_  to follow her orders.”

“Patton, it’s okay,” Roman repeats, eyes clouding with concern.  “She has no hold over you anymore. We can be together, and we will be together because-”

No.  Patton feels like he’s going to be sick, blood roaring in his ears as he watches Roman’s mouth form those three little words that mean the end of everything.  “Please,” he whispers, far too weak to be heard, “no.”

“-I love you.”

Patton screams.  He pushes Roman away, slamming him into the dusty bookshelves, and collapses to the ground.

“No!”  He screams at his boiling blood, his fracturing bones, his ill-fitting skin.  “I won’t! No!”

_Rip out his heart, rip out his heart._  “No!”

The spider-silk breaks apart, and Patton starts to fall into pieces - a chunk of arm falling to the floor, his ear, his left eye.  He breaks with his purpose.

His lips are rotting away; he can feel the air on his deteriorating gums.

“Patton?! Patton!”  He can hear Roman’s voice faintly through his remaining ear, a soothing sound to send him back to his grave. He supposes he couldn’t ask for more.

“Patton? No, please, Patton, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Roman is in front of him, the only clear spot in his fading vision.  His chest seems to glow, indicating just where to tear.

Yet, Patton will not.  The orders roar in his blood, unraveling him bit by bit.  His bones are splintering inside of him.

Roman is crying, and that is not good.  Even with his cobbled brain falling to bits, Patton knows that.  He wishes he has lips to smile, a working tongue to tell Roman everything is going to be okay.  He reaches out a hand, just bits of molding flesh hanging on bone, to cup Roman’s face, but the sorcerer grabs it, face suddenly hard with determination.

“Take it.”

No.

“Take it, Patton.”

No. never.

“Patton.”  He is almost gone now.  All his one eye can see is Roman’s chest, glowing.  “Patton,  _please.”_

The glow grows and grows until it is all he can see.  Patton feels his hand move.

His lips are suddenly whole again.

 

 

Roman’s heart is heavy in Patton’s hands.  He is trembling but clutches it close, holding it to where his too-large heart beats, ricocheting pain through him with every pulse.  There is a great and terrible roaring outside; his mistress is here.  She knows she has won.

The shadow servants hiss anxiously, fluttering around him.  _‘I’m sorry,’_ he mouths over and over, unable to speak, to move, to think past his grief.

There is roaring outside, and Patton thinks of how much Roman would hate it if the library burned.  Slowly, he pulls himself to his feet, clutching that heart to his chest.  It fits well in his grasp, warm like a hand. 

It is a million miles up the stairs, and he trips more than once, landing with a thud on his newly-healed bones.  He shelters the heart, whispering to it.   _‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’_

She waits outside, different in the sunlight.  Her dragon is crushing his baby’s breath.

“Well done, Patton!”  She cries upon the sight of the heart in his hands.  “Now, come, we have work to do.”

He trembles under her gaze.  Not from fear, from rage.  “You made a mistake,” he informs her lowly.

“What?”  She tenses, red eyes flashing.

“You made a mistake when you formed me.”   He touches his red-coated hand to that place in his chest that hurts, every second of every day.  “My heart is too big.”

She scoffs.  “You’re fine, child. Now give me that heart.”

“It hurts me, how much I feel,” Patton says, disregarding her entirely.  “I think that was your biggest mistake.”  The abomination looks his creator in the eyes and smiles.  “You should’ve given me a smaller heart.”

He cries out, a sharp, shrill sound, and the shadow servants descend on the garden.  They devour her down to the bones before she even has time to scream.

“Thank you,” he says softly, and they nod before dissolving into the light.

Patton looks up at the dragon, so tall and massive it almost blots out the sun.  “Take me to her home,” he commands, and the dragon bows before him.

 

 

Same archaic books stacked floor-to-ceiling, same cobwebs, same bloodstains, same graveyard dirt - the Dragon Witch’s lair is just as he remembers it.  

“I was born here,” he tells Roman’s heart.  “I was a bit jumbled, but I got  _patched_  up just fine.”  He smiles weakly.  “What, not even a chuckle?”

He touches the heart gently and can almost pretend it is still warm.

“I… I’m going to fix this, Roman. Somehow, I’m going to make it better.”

The shadows bring Roman’s body to him, but Patton cannot bear to gaze upon it.  He clutches the heart tighter to his chest and wonders how a dead man can cry.

He pours over books on the arcane and black magic and necromancy and love magic and biology and Latin and so many different subjects that he wants to tear out his sewn-in hair, but he grits his teeth, bleached with age and exposure, and he lights another candle to keep reading into the night.

The maids fell apart when the Dragon Witch… when he killed the Dragon Witch.  He touches their dry bones, briefly, and mourns them.  “Forgive me for this,” he murmurs, breaking an extra rib out of one of them, “but he needs it.”

He works and cries and tries and tries again and feels as if he will die everytime he thinks he detects a hint of deterioration in Roman’s heart.  “Just hold on, love,” he begs of it.  “Just a little longer.”

It is far, far longer than a little while.

Roman’s body grows cold under his hands, and Patton loses more than one day lost in despair.

Until, finally, one day, he finds himself in the back of a drawer in the Witch’s desk.  There he is, plotted out in graphite.  Patton traces a finger over the layout of his organs, the swell of his too-large heart and the thing in the middle of it.  It just might work.

He dismisses the shadow servants who attend to Roman, rubbing him with preservatives and keeping the blood from stilling in his veins.  He prepares Roman’s heart himself, adorning it with the right runes and spells before driving a cord of ash wood into the center of it.  The heart swells in his hand, and it begins to beat.

He lowers it into Roman’s chest with shaking hands then stitches Roman up with spider silk, delicate and silver against the dead man’s dark skin.  Patton lowers his face to Roman’s chest and listens.

_Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum._

“Please, Roman,” he whispers, clutching a hand into the sorcerer’s robes.  “Don’t leave me alone here.”  Tears roll down his cheeks and splash onto the stitches.  “I love you.”

 “Took you long enough, Pat.”  The voice is rough with disuse but undeniably his.  “I love you, too, if you’re not going to kill me for it this time.”

“Roman!”  Patton cries, head snapping up to meet sunshine eyes.

Roman smiles weakly, sitting up.  “Hey.”

“How you feel?”  Patton hovers over him, unable to stop himself from touching Roman, feeling his warmth.

“Strange,” Roman admits, pressing a hand to the scar running the length of his chest.  “My heart feels like it’s too large.”

Patton laughs, wiping away tears.  “You get used to it.”  He takes Roman’s hand and squeezes.  “I missed you.”

He squeezes back.  “I missed you, too.”

“I love you.”  Patton helps him off of the table.

“I love you, too.”  Roman’s arms wrap around him.  “So, so much.”

Patton opens the door of the laboratory, and they walk into the sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> This is honestly one of my favorite works for this series and just in general. I was going to put off posting it and go in order, but ehhh
> 
> Art so pretty, it'll rip your heart out by @ierindoodles [here](https://ierindoodles.tumblr.com/post/179540195629/13-day-of-halloween-day-ten-necromancer-another)
> 
> Roast me if you see a typo!


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